Of course because this CNC is being built from scratch and not from a kit, not even following the plans I purchased, because along the way, many upgrades were made. The plans called for lead screws (I’m using ball screws), all round linear rails (two of my Axis’s use flat rails) and used plywood (mine is aluminum).
If you’ve been following along, this build has drifted really far from the plans.
Which means that in many cases extra brackets, stand offs and more needs to be manufactured.
So after a great deal of measuring and consideration, a bunch of brackets were “designed”. These all have to be cut out of Aluminum. Then drilled, tapped and scuffed.
Here are the designs I came up with.
One area that needed attention was stops for the gantry… the liner rails are about 50 mm short of the length of the base, so stops are required, just in case, so the seal, or worse yet the bearings in the blocks do not go past the end of the rails.
The ball screws are short as well, so a stand off was designed to hold the bearing blocks and in the front the stops have been incorporated into the single design.
Sure, the design of this CNC will have proximity sensors, so the hard parts should never touch or crash into each other, but this is just for safety and to protect the bearing blocks from internal damage.
Also needed to create brackets to hold the drag chains on the Y and X Axis’. It’s possible that an additional drag chain will be required for the Z Axis, but can’t design anything until everything else is in place and I can experiment with the wires and cooling tubes for the spindle.
There will be more to come!
